Does the Gender Preference for Competition Affect Job Performance? Evidence from a Real Effort Experiment

Previous experimental evidence has documented that competition may enhance the performance of male subjects relative to female subjects in some tasks. In these studies competition in wages is imposed exogenously by the experimenter. This note describes data for a task where a simple agency relationship is established in the laboratory between two groups of agents, managers and workers. The managers make the compensation choice for the worker from either a non-competitive piece rate or the competitive tournament payment scheme. The results show that even though male subjects are better at the task this advantage dissipates when the competitive compensation scheme is chosen for them by the manager. Evidence also suggests that the gender of the manager may be an important facet of the agency relationship